My whole invoicing system crashed right before a big payment was due

Happened last Tuesday. Was using a free app to track hours and send bills. Opened it up and got a blank screen. Tried everything. Restarted my laptop, checked for updates. Nothing. Had a $1,800 invoice for a branding job that needed to go out that day. Panic mode. Ended up building a new invoice from scratch in Google Docs in about an hour. Looked way less professional than my usual ones. Sent it off with a note explaining the tech issue. Client was cool about it, paid on time. But man, that hour was rough. What do you guys use for billing that won't just die on you?

4 comments

4 Comments

path471mo ago

Classic free app move right there.

lucashenderson27d ago

Ugh, that reminds me of the time my go-to free photo editing site just vanished overnight. Poof, gone. I had like a hundred half-finished projects bookmarked there. It was all just gone. Taught me to never trust my stuff to something that can just disappear without a trace.

tarar381mo ago

My buddy's FreshBooks crashed right before tax day.

shanes661mo ago

Oh man, that's the worst timing. I've heard a few stories like that about cloud apps having a bad day when everyone rushes to file. Makes you want to have a local backup copy of everything, just in case.